


through a blood-drunk eye

by hell_swan



Series: l'ètoile [2]
Category: Bloodborne (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, Trans Female Character, explicit but less so than "the doll gives the hunter a sad handjob", here's a boss fight and dream sex to break it up, jeanne continues to work out her angst over her dead wife, so hey remember how i said false sunrise was the happy story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-04
Updated: 2019-05-04
Packaged: 2020-02-18 16:32:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18703324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hell_swan/pseuds/hell_swan
Summary: "Why did you tell me your name?" Jeanne says, knowing it's the wrong question to ask if she wants to maintain this delicate peace. Amelia stiffens, body unnaturally still and voice caught in her throat. Jeanne kisses a crooked line along her shoulder to the middle of her back, tasting sweat and smelling incense. Then she's back at Amelia's ear, saying "no more deflecting, mon coeur. Not now.""An executioner should know their victim." Amelia says, turning to face Jeanne and offering a fragile smile that breaks her heart. The pieces are starting to come together, even though there's a fog in her mind that prevents the full picture from forming. Amelia clutches her pendant to her chest and releases a wistful sigh. "Wake up, hunter, and carry out your duty."





	through a blood-drunk eye

**Author's Note:**

> a) Jeanne is still trans and french
> 
> b) things will get worse before they get better
> 
> c) no really false sunrise was the fluff for this series

A woman is praying at the cathedral's altar as Jeanne clears the last step, her cane clicking against the stone and echoing in the vast space. A sense on the edge of her mind perks up, sniffing like a hound who's caught the trail, and suddenly she can hear the prayer with perfect clarity. Jeanne  _knows_ , like she knows the death rattle of a beast, that these words will be last rites for one of them. The city revolves around carnage, and she feels as if the cathedral is salivating over what's to come.

The possibilities light a fire in Jeanne's chest, wild and bright and begging for frenzied motion.

But when it happens, Jeanne regrets it. The prayer is cut off and the woman's breath comes in painful gasps, her bones cracking and shifting and  _breaking_. Blood splashes over the altar and the woman is now a beast, long flowing hair and ragged bandages covering gangly limbs that end in colossal claws. It turns its head and looks down a snout at Jeanne, the woman's tattered dress covering its eyes and horns sprouting out of its skull.

It howls, splitting the air with rage and sorrow, and the hunter in Jeanne recoils at how  _human_  it sounds. There's a plaintive note in its screeching, one that stalls her motions for a fraction of a second, which is all it takes for the beast to make its first move. It lopes across the room, one of its hands clenched to its chest, and the other sailing down through the air. Jeanne barely leaps to the side in time, and the force of the impact knocks her into the cathedral wall.

Jeanne is on her feet but no where near steady, and the beast swings its closed fist at her. She's clipped and sent flying, bouncing off of a protruding column and stopping in a heap in the middle of the room. The beast lumbers over, and every instinct in Jeanne's body tells her to  _move_. She waits, ears straining to hear the telltale shift of cloth and creak of muscle, before she throws herself backwards. The beast's fists crash into the floor and Jeanne wrestles her gun into line, pulling the trigger as she falls.

The spray of quicksilver hits the beast square in the face, most of it crashing into its snout while a few holes are burned into the ruined dress. It screams, clawing at itself as Jeanne lands on her ass and her gun goes clattering into the room's dark shadows. She scrambles up, the pain in her bad knee almost knocking her back down, and swings her cane, the metal singing as it slides out of rigidity. The beast is pacing in front of Jeanne, growling as it tenses and rethinks an attack, over and over.

Jeanne cracks it across the nose with her whip, and blood hits the cathedral floor; a hunter's consecration, observed with her humorless smile and a cry of outrage from the beast. It roars, a tinge of agony on the edges of the fury, and its claws leave furrows in the stone as it drags them forward in a brutal swipe. It catches Jeanne in the chest, and doesn't break her bones so much as it shatters them, like a window collapsing under a brick. The force of it sends her across a lazy arc that ends suddenly against one of the columns, and she tastes her own blood.

There isn't enough time to recover, not with the beast charging again, and Jeanne keeps her eyes open as another blow from its empty hand flattens her torso. Shock keeps most of the pain from bleeding through (either that or having her spine punched as flat as a piece of paper), and she's able hear one last keening howl. It sounds, Jeanne thinks, like the beast is sorry to have done this. The dream takes her before she can laugh at how absurd that thought is.

Except, it isn't the dream that Jeanne normally wakes up to - the Doll's patient smile and the crowded graves. It's a bedroom, furnished in silk and dark wood. A few lanterns dot the walls, their golden warmth casting soft shadows that almost hide the woman asleep in bed.

Jeanne's heart leaps into her throat - the room is smudged around the edges, a fact that has her hackles rising, instinct warning of a Yharnam peculiarity and its weird menace. It's what keeps her from tossing her gun aside (though she sets her cane down, because a dream is a dream, and they make her whole); from rushing to the bed and embracing the woman with the desperate strength of a widow. It isn't Christine, because Christine is ash and regret a thousand miles away.

So Jeanne takes careful, measured steps, until she's flush with the billowing edges of a comforter they'd gotten for an anniversary. Snow had been heavy on the trees and Christine could never keep warm, so it made sense. It was a small thing; basic, boring domesticity that once filled her days. No screaming or death or madness. Just the scent of lilies and a laugh that drove Jeanne's heartbeat.

The woman stirs, rolling onto her side to face Jeanne, still asleep. Her hair is pale, golden in the lantern light where it would be like straw if they were outside. The luster of it suits her, sharp features soft and gentle in rest. Jeanne's never seen her before, yet she's overwhelmed by the urge to brush her fingers across the sleeping woman's cheek. Jeanne tugs a glove off and gives in, finding her warm to the touch. It's as if she's spent hours underneath the sun and it sends a jolt through the hunter's body.

The woman wakes up with a small murmur, eyes fluttering open and locking onto Jeanne as the sleep clears from them. Instead of shock or alarm, there's only affection, and she nuzzles into Jeanne's hand. The hunter's knees buckle and it's a struggle to stay standing, which alarms the woman. She rises, leaning back on her elbows, concern twisting her mouth into a frown as she says "Jeanne?"

"How do you know my name?" Jeanne chokes out, gun falling to the carpet. The woman pronounced it perfectly, without the butchery of a Yharnam accent and suffused in joy, like  _saying it_  was a pleasure. She's only experienced that with Christine, and this woman is  _not Christine_ , a fact that aggravates her instincts and begs to force violent action on this odd sanctuary.

"Oh, my heart." The woman says, sitting up properly and spreading her arms out, an invitation Jeanne accepts without a second thought. She's on the bed with speed only accomplished in a dream, gloves and coat and hat and mask gone like they were never there to begin with. The woman draws her in close, kissing her forehead as she says "frail before your time. Weak of mind and spirit."

The prayer, Jeanne realizes, pulling away and studying the woman. She doesn't stop the hunter, smiling with the sort of softness that Jeanne is  _aching_  to give herself to. Her eyes reflect the lamplight and while she looks nothing like Christine, Jeanne finds that mattering less and less. The bedroom is warm and the blankets comfortable and the body before her willing. 

"Who are you?" Jeanne says, mouth pressed against the woman's neck. She nuzzles it, hands in her lap and altogether useless. Her lips part and she dares to taste the woman's skin, receiving a short moan for her trouble. Jeanne nips at her throat, to hear that sound again and to remind her of the hunter's question. She isn't disappointed in either case.

"I - oh - I am  _yours_." The woman's hands dig into Jeanne's back, and she arches into her, blankets falling away to reveal a cream colored nightgown that hides absolutely nothing. "I am yours, Jeanne. Yours, yours,  _yours_."

Jeanne digs one hand into the woman's hair, the other cradling her cheek, and squeezes the former into a fist. The woman groans and Jeanne swallows it up, kissing and keeping her in place. Her hips are canting beneath the covers, legs tangled up one each other and stopping her from straddling Jeanne. The position is leaving them both at loose ends, as if they were on leashes and had hit an all too short limit.

So Jeanne undresses, seconds passing in the blink of lust addled eyes, and pins the woman beneath her. Stretched out and gasping, she can only whine and lean her head up, chasing Jeanne's lips and falling short each time. The hunter has one hand full of her thin wrists, keeping them in place above her head, and the other is tracing patterns on her stomach.

"It's customary to know the name of one's partner." Jeanne says, brushing her lips over the woman's forehead as she pulls at the hem of her nightgown. The fabric moves like water, shifting and folding in on itself with barely any effort from Jeanne. The woman isn't wearing anything beneath it, and the hunter can smell what she's doing to her.

"And I know yours." She says before crying out, bucking up into Jeanne's hand as she digs her nails into her hip. Her eyes are starting to shine with tears, and frustration is growing in her voice as she says "an object needs no name, only its owner, and mine has me well in hand."

Jeanne snorts and kisses behind her ear, moving down her neck and ending at the hollow of her throat. The woman's moaning and whimpering with every touch, and Jeanne lets her fingers dance right above her thighs. Her skin is velvet soft, flushed and beginning to sweat, and Jeanne's thoughts are starting to cloud with the urge to bury herself in her gathering heat. It's only a dream, she thinks, and Yharnam can't corrupt all of them.

"Give me this, Jeanne." The woman says, chest heaving and thighs pressed together. She's desperate, not for release denied, but for  _any_  escape. Jeanne knows that feeling like she knows her own heart. It's what sent her to Yharnam, her wife's ghost clinging to her shoulders and a city trying to burn its madness out behind them. The woman bites her bottom lip and mewls " _please_."

Jeanne lets go of her wrists and moves herself on top of her, straddling her hips as she kisses her. The hunter buries her fingers in the woman's hair, growling as the woman's arms wrap around her shoulders. She has long nails, each one like a star as they all dig into the muscle of her back and form a searing constellation. Jeanne breaks their mouths apart and starts to suck along the woman's jaw, pulling at the satin skin until it bruises.

It's been years for Jeanne, her dalliance with the Doll not withstanding. She wants to consume the woman underneath her, to take her in her mouth and drink until there's nothing left. Time passes in small moments, now - the scrape of Jeanne's teeth against her collarbone and the woman's hands tangled in Jeanne's hair as the hunter's tongue works against her soaked and swollen center.

Jeanne's mouth has been filled with blood and smoke and worse - so, so much worse - ever since arriving in Yharnam. Heresy oozes in the gaps between her teeth, acid reminders of how she choked down filth and called it revelation. Outside, she's damned, a third of the way down the path and wracked with an alien divinity.  _Here_ , Jeanne licks a slow line from the bottom of the woman's opening to her clit, warmth and wetness spilling over the hunter's chin.

The woman reaches down to stroke Jeanne's hair, fingers becoming tangled and tugging at the roots with each curl of the hunter's tongue. The pain is so unlike the agonies that have become Jeanne's world, and it excites her, knowing the woman hurts her because she can't help herself. Jeanne moans and delves deeper, broad strokes making the woman cry out and pull harder. It's like she's being fed sparks, bright bits of heat that hit her belly and ignite.

It's the work of a moment to reach for her cock, and Jeanne can barely stay upright when her fingers wrap around her own length. She's soaked, covered in her own arousal, and the temptation to wet her other hand is too much to ignore. Jeanne's fingers glide into the woman like she was made to fit there, slotted in the fluid heat and held by the muscle behind it. Jeanne stretches and curls them in a come hither motion, smiling when the woman screams.

_Gotcha,_  she thinks, focusing on keeping her hands stroking in some semblance of a rhythm, drawing them both towards the same peak. The woman is chanting her name between ragged breaths and sharp moans, her voice cracking under the exquisite torture. Jeanne remembers laying Christine out like this, keeping her wife on the rising crest of pleasure until her mouth was sore and her wrists stiff for days afterward. She's tempted to do the same here, the woman sobbing while her hips jerk into Jeanne's face, followed by a burst of fresh wetness. The only thing that stops her is a ragged "mercy, please dearest."

Jeanne is wiping the taste from her lips when the woman finds all of her words again, voice shaking to match the shudder in her thighs.

"I am Amelia." She says, eyes glassy above flushed cheeks. She's still holding fistfuls of Jeanne's hair, working the curls between her fingertips and sighing. They stay like that for a few moments before Amelia  _tugs_  and says "come here."

The kiss they share is different from the ones before, molten and stinging. Jeanne swears she can taste blood in Amelia's mouth, but can't explore further because her hands have moved to grasp Jeanne's backside. Amelia squeezes, nails digging in on the outside edges, and the hunter groans, hips bucking forward. She's been hard for what feels like hours, cock dripping uselessly as she feasted on Amelia.

Who seems to know, because she laughs to herself; a small, bell-like thing. Jeanne growls and seizes her hips, watching as the relaxed affection in Amelia's eyes shifts into heady want. She's shaking in Jeanne's hands, like there's something in her chest that's buzzing and reverberating throughout her body. Amelia smiles, teeth showing and just this side of hungry, before she says "claim what's yours, Jeanne."

As a rule, Jeanne prefers submission and the slow satisfaction that comes with being taken apart, inch by aching inch. There's an element of it in this tableau, in the way Amelia's arms are looped around her neck and the hint of authority on her face. That feeling doesn't fade when Jeanne's inside of her, every slow thrust rewarded with Amelia moaning into her mouth.

Time means nothing in Yharnam. Jeanne doesn't know how long they spend like that, her body wrapped up in Amelia; her mouth chased down and pillaged by Amelia's desperate kissing. With each slap of Jeanne's hips meeting the backs of Amelia's thighs, it feels like they just started and as if it's finally ended. The sensations running through her like lightning are overwhelming, each one carrying the force of a sword striking her cane.

Jeanne holds herself flush to Amelia, panting and feeling sweat carve slow, lazy paths on her skin. Amelia bares her teeth and leans up, biting into the softness of Jeanne's neck and keening when the hunter drives her hips forward, pushing Amelia into the mattress. It goes on like that for a rapturous few seconds until the woman pulls away from the many bruises she's left behind, saying "please Jeanne, do not tease, I need-"

Jeanne kisses her quiet and then fucks her screaming, Amelia's voice muffled and exquisite as it dies in the hunter's mouth. Both grab the other tight, leaving red trails and fading imprints as Jeanne's thrusts become harried, losing their rhythm. Years, she thinks, eyes rolling as Amelia clamps down on her. Jeanne comes without preamble, orgasm a strike upside her head with how it leaves her thoughts in shambles.

Amelia's release is what puts them back together, the woman holding onto Jeanne as if letting go of the hunter will doom her. Amelia's legs are hooked up around her hips and her mouth is wide open on Jeanne's pulse. Where Jeanne was blown open and scattered, it's like Amelia is being condensed, her entire body tense around a single point. She murmurs nonsense as it fades, the tightness gone from her limbs like snow melting in early spring.

Exhaustion stalks Jeanne like scavengers haunting a kill and she gathers Amelia up in her arms, shifting them both until they're side by side. The woman is half asleep already, shivering and moaning softly, and Jeanne wishes any of this was real. The room darkens at the thought, flames dimming and the blurred edges threatening to move inward.

"Sleep, Jeanne." Amelia says, a yawn bloating Jeanne's name. "You need your strength."

So Jeanne does, and time moves in another strange way, stopping to be noticed hours later. Amelia is sitting up in bed, blankets a mess of hills and valleys around her waist, and she's praying. The words are familiar, like something Jeanne was taught in grade school and then forgot. She struggles to dredge even a small piece of them out of the swamp of her memory and only succeeds in growing frustrated, throwing an arm across her face and swearing.

Amelia's prayers stop and Jeanne winces, moving her arm to see the woman looking back at her. She's grasping a pendant in one hand and holding Jeanne's blanket covered leg with another, studying the hunter's hidden form. Amelia's fingers stroke along Jeanne's calf, filling her with warmth and starting the easy war of lulling her back to sleep. But before she can, Jeanne pushes herself to match Amelia's position and nuzzles the woman's shoulder.

"Why did you tell me your name?" Jeanne says, knowing it's the wrong question to ask if she wants to maintain this delicate peace. Amelia stiffens, body unnaturally still and voice caught in her throat. Jeanne kisses a crooked line along her shoulder to the middle of her back, tasting sweat and smelling incense. Then she's back at Amelia's ear, saying "no more deflecting,  _mon coeur_. Not now."

(the endearment belongs to Christine, and Jeanne struggles to keep that line of thought from stealing every scrap of comfort this safe harbor has provided)

"An executioner should know their victim." Amelia says, turning to face Jeanne and offering a fragile smile that breaks her heart. The pieces are starting to come together, even though there's a fog in her mind that prevents the full picture from forming. Amelia clutches her pendant to her chest and releases a wistful sigh. "Wake up, hunter, and carry out your duty."

Darkness washes over Jeanne's sight and leaves as suddenly as it came. She's back in Yharnam, at the foot of the steps that lead to the cathedral's massive central chamber. The city burns and beasts howl, and combined with the persistent ache in her bad leg, it's like Jeanne never left. The memory of Amelia and the bedroom is already becoming murky, eaten up by the dark places in Jeanne's head.

But as she fights the beast in the cathedral, she sees a flash of gold in its hand and hears the echo of Amelia's voice in its screaming. She  _remembers_ , and stops short.

The beast and the woman are one in the same, Jeanne realizes, whip coiling loosely at her feet. It's Amelia charging forward and roaring in her face, dagger teeth brilliant in the light and snapping together an inch from Jeanne's nose. It's  _Amelia_  trying to gut her with her claws, an open handed swipe that the hunter rolls under. Pain explodes in her bad leg, the stone floor unforgiving, and Jeanne screams, forcing another roll to dodge Amelia's fist.

"Shit,  _shit_." Jeanne says, sprawled on the floor and tangled on her whip. Amelia looms above her, teeth bared and growling. Jeanne has her finger on the trigger of her gun and could have it pressed to Amelia's throat before the beast can shred her. She can kill the monster and drown the oncoming guilt in blood. Amelia's hesitating, whining and panting as Jeanne braces the gun's stock against her shoulder, barrel pressed into matted white fur.

Amelia is growling, low and constant like a distant waterfall. Her voice rises and falls in a pattern that Jeanne recognizes the third way through -  _she's praying_. Hands clasped together and knees pressed to the stone, Amelia's entire body is wracked with tremors as she works through the same damn prayer Jeanne first heard her reciting.

"You want this." Jeanne says, letting her gun fall away from Amelia. The beast roars at her, still bent in supplication, and she pushes the barrel back into her throat. Jeanne has two choices and neither do anything to calm the sickness lashing her heart. She can shoot and hope it kills Amelia, or at least puts her close enough to death that a second shot will complete her journey, or die.

But dying will do nothing to prevent this from happening again. The only question is if it will send her to the Doll or to Amelia, and Jeanne is desperate to keep it from being answered.

_Better a lover dead than disappointed_ , Jeanne thinks bitterly, smelling blood and church incense and the rank perfume of Amelia's breath. If there's a cure for Yharnam's madness, it's hidden in deeper places than Jeanne's been able to delve, and there's no time left for Amelia. Each second that passes is one where the beast's back claws dig harder into the carved stone; where she loses the thread of her prayer and bares her teeth at Jeanne.

" _Mon coeur_ ," Jeanne starts, reaching to pet the side of Amelia's snout, hesitant in the face of a sharp growl that fades into restrained whimpering, " _Amelia_. I cannot."

Amelia says nothing and pushes her neck into Jeanne's gun, the weight grinding the stock into the hunter's shoulder. It's  _excruciating_ , and Jeanne screams, tears running down her cheeks as she tries to tug herself out from under the gun and the beast. Amelia slams a hand down beside Jeanne's struggling body, digging her claws in and roaring.  The hunter realizes that  _she_  doesn't have any time left either, a bloodless escape forever hidden by Amelia's desire to be freed from the curse of beasthood. One of them must die, now.

The first gunshot leaves a smoking crater in its wake, blood spilling from the wound as if it's a river whose banks have overflown.

The second gunshot scorches a path across Amelia's stomach, and the burning quicksilver shower turns great bellows of anguish into high pitched squeals.

There isn't third shot. There's only the edge of Jeanne's cane, sharp and sudden, coming down to finish the first one's job. Amelia dies looking at the hunter, a single blood-drunk eye uncovered and focused on her face. Jeanne swears she can see a measure of gratitude in its wild depths and sobs brokenly in the empty cathedral. The dream may have only been a dream, but it still delivered another woman dead by Jeanne's hand.

Her howling is almost enough to cover up the sound of the clock tower bell outside as it rings to announce the start of a long, terrible night.


End file.
